A lifetime in theatre

Though she remains quietly pleased about it all – ‘‘It’s nice to know that people value what I’ve done’’ – she’s never been one to trumpet her achievements. A rarity in a business known for its overweening egos, Woodrow has always been more interested in empowering others.

For the best part of 50 years, she has pursued a wide-ranging career in theatre in Canberra. Through her work with Canberra Youth Theatre, she provided opportunities for young people to learn about drama in an improvisatory way. In parallel, with Jigsaw Theatre Company, she worked with professional actors to develop and present work for schools.

As a freelance director, she’s worked with several ensemble companies of actors, developing new scripts and nurturing new playwrights. She has the distinction of directing the inaugural production for Bell Shakespeare Company in 1991. And she was part of the most recent attempt at a mainstream, full-time professional theatre company in Canberra in the late 1980s.
Yet her work as a director of avant-garde and community theatre is far removed from her beginnings as a young actor in Melbourne in the 1950s. Her parents founded the Children’s Theatre Guild of Victoria (later the Youth and Children’s branch of the Melbourne Theatre Company). While still at school, Woodrow began acting professionally on stage, radio and television performing with, among others, Barry Humphries.

After moving to Canberra with her young family in 1962, she acted in plays with Canberra Repertory Society and, later in the decade, ran drama workshops for young people. Then, influenced by the ideas of British educator Dorothy Heathcote, she established Canberra Youth Theatre in 1972.

‘‘I wanted to release children’s imaginations rather than preparing then to perform on stage as if they were adults,’’ Woodrow recalls. ‘‘99.9 per cent of the kids we worked with were never going to be professional actors. So our work was based always on improvisation – not for an audience but to allow the children to lose themselves and their inhibitions.’’
In 1974, she formed Jigsaw Theatre Company, initially as a theatre-in-education company, which ran in parallel with Canberra Youth Theatre and comprised a full-time team of actor/tutors.

‘‘In later decades, many of my students have told me how much they enjoyed those years,’’ she says. ‘‘Some parents at the time hated us because they thought it was ‘part of the New Age nonsense’ and that kids should be studying for exams. But the young people were learning about themselves and the world, expanding their imagination and developing self-confidence.’’

Canberra Times theatre critic and writer Peter Wilkins, who succeeded Woodrow as director of Jigsaw Theatre Company in 1979, recalls her energy, passion and commitment. ‘‘Her work was based on illuminating people’s lives and empowering them, through participation,’’ he says. ‘‘Her other great talent has been to provide opportunities for emerging professional theatre practitioners in Canberra.’’

One of these was Lissa Benyon who, as a teenager, attended Canberra Youth Theatre, then worked in the office at Jigsaw, was a founding member – with Woodrow – of Fools Gallery Theatre Company before becoming a playwright.

‘‘Carol was inspiring,’’ Benyon recalls. ‘‘You didn’t need a huge amount of instant natural talent or charisma but she encouraged us to develop self-confidence, a sense of ourselves and what was possible.’’

Woodrow later directed several of her plays, including The Women of March the First and Grandfather is Dying. ‘‘Early on, I had no idea of structure or plot shape,’’ Benyon says, ‘‘so we worked together in shaping something that actually worked as a piece of theatre.’’

These days Benyon is no longer involved in theatre but writes novels under the name of Lilian Darcy. One of these, an e-book titled Café du Jour, was partly influenced by her years working with Woodrow in Canberra Youth Theatre.

After five years with Fools Gallery Theatre, an ensemble-based company which staged and toured some powerful feminist theatre such as It Bleeds, It Sleeps and Standard Operating Procedure, Woodrow worked as a freelance theatre director as well as a director at the Australian National Playwrights Conference.

She continued her ensemble-based work in the 1980s, with Interact Theatre Company, a mainstage and community company, which staged some memorable productions in the ANU Arts Centre, including Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair.

In 1989, Interact Theatre combined forces with Eureka! Theatre to form the Canberra Theatre Company, with Woodrow as director. This was the latest in a series of attempts at a mainstream, full-time, professional theatre company in Canberra. With funding from the ACT Arts Development Board, the company staged a number of productions including Les Liaisons dangereuses and A Midsummer Night’s Dream but, following the withdrawal of corporate sponsorship, wound up in 1991.
Woodrow then returned to her career as a freelance director. John Bell, who had admired her work for many years, invited her to direct The Merchant of Venice, the inaugural production by Bell Shakespeare, was staged in a circus tent near the Canberra Aquarium in 1991.

She directed a series of classics for Canberra Rep in the 1990s, including Ibsen’s The Doll’s House and Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy, as well as staging new Australian works, with her company Wildwood, at the Street Theatre. And she has continued to direct into the present decade, as part of the ‘‘Season at the Street’’, which continues the work of developing new repertoire that she was doing in the 1970s and ’80s.

Following a period of illness in recent years, Woodrow is not as involved in theatre as once she was. ‘‘I no longer feel that I have a duty to see as much as I can,’’ she says. She’s reluctant to pass comment on the contemporary scene but, when pressed, admits to wistfulness at the passing of the political and artistic ferment of the 1970s and ’80s. ‘‘There was money, then, to experiment and fail. Perhaps we’ve become more conservative.’’

She remains convinced that the best way to make theatre is with an ensemble of actors. ‘‘It’s the most creative way to achieve the best work because the team members become so nuanced with each other. And I think that experiential drama, through play for children, is the best tool to teach anything by getting them involved imaginatively.’’
Despite her strongly held principles, she is not driven by ego. As Peter Wilkins observes: ‘‘I’ve always felt that she [is] a person who [is] always concerned about the work and the people around her. As such, I think her ego has always been suppressed.’’

And several generations of students, actors and playwrights will be forever grateful for the way in which she inspired and empowered them.